Here we have gained knowledge and tools to encounter the dragon. Joseph Campbell would say that this is the part of the journey when dragons emerge from the shadowy wood and must be slain…but this isn’t the way at The Seattle School.

And like any good transformative adventure, there are dragons. This is life well-lived, and it is a quest of meaning-making and discovery. The descent is disorienting, destabilizing, and in a word: deconstructing. This is the stumbling along the hard, dark path-time. This requisite stage brings one into the darkest chamber of the heart, a place filled with trauma and treasure, a place through which one must trod to manifest the deeply held desire for transformation. This is the time of tests and trials, which serve as fortifiers as we learn to rely upon companions as well as our own developing abilities to move to and through suffering.

This is the stage of the journey where the epic work of self-reflection takes place with the purpose of renewal and discovery.

We each accepted the call to come here, and with this acceptance in many ways we disappeared from the world, descending into the mysterious, archetypal dark wood. Here, Mary DeJong, who received her MA in Theology and Culture, speaks of her own journey through dark woods and gaining wisdom through “trials and trails that wound.” She encourages her classmates to remember their journeys and their scars. As part of The Seattle School’s 19th Commencement ceremony, a student from each degree program was nominated by their peers to share reflections on their time at the school and the transition into the next season of life.

School of dragons keeping light fury